Remote Ancestors, Kaori YamashitA
6/3/2017 – 7/8/2017
In Remote Ancestors Bass & Reiner presents works by Kaori Yamashita, the artist’s first exhibition in the Bay Area. Yamashita builds installations that consist primarily of three dimensional drawings and sculptures, constructed of plaster, mortar, and ceramics, which are presented along with architectural elements such as walls, bricks, and shelves. Conflating the material languages of art, architecture, and archeology, she allows the juxtapositions to construct meaning as the resulting ambiguous forms vacillate between mono (the physical thing) and koto (the idea of a thing.)
Yamashita has conceived of the exhibition as an archaeological ruin. The works reference simple tools humans have used since ancient times which are imbued with their ancestral histories. Following the Japanese practice of kintsugi, in which broken objects are repaired with gold or platinum joinery, the sculptures are simultaneously newly made, repaired, and remade. Working contingently and primarily with the outlines of objects, Yamashita’s works are at once things and the ideas of things.
Based in the Bay Area, Yamashita has exhibited internationally including solo exhibitions at FEMTE, Tokyo, Japan; Shionoe Museum of Art, Kagawa, Japan; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany, and group exhibitions at Nanmoncho 323, Taipei, Taiwan; Seventeen, Aberdeen, Scotland; and Galerie Kritiku, Prague, Czech Republic, among others. kaoriyamashita.com